“Y-YES’M,” he said at last, “or—well, some; and then—father has worries of his own. Mortgages are kind of worrisome things, I guess; a man has to keep thinking about them.”
“Is there a mortgage?”
Derrick caught his breath in dismay; his instant thought was:
“Now you have put your foot in it, old blunderbuss; the idea of Aunt Elsie not knowing that there was a mortgage on the house!” It seemed to the boy that he had known it ever since he was born.
“Oh, yes,” he said, trying to speak carelessly, “there’s a mortgage, of course; there always is I guess, on houses; they’re there when you buy ’em, aren’t they?”
But Aunt Elsie declined to be drawn into a discussion on real estate transfers; she quietly asked another question:
“Do you know how large the mortgage is, Derrick?”
Oh, didn’t he! Why, he was sure he had known that ever since he began to read, and write, “units, tens, hundreds, thousands”; of course he must reply.
“I’ve heard it mentioned—it is eight thousand I believe—but—” No, he wouldn’t say that. Catch him telling that the great trouble was the old thing was due, and had passed into other hands, and the mean skinflint who held it now wanted every penny of it at once.
He sprang up with an excellent appearance of haste as he exclaimed: “Why, dear me, is that clock striking three? I shall be late at the gym, and it will be Ray’s fault, won’t it?”